Maddies Manga

Will Aoi ever be able to find work in Kakuriyo? While she’s still on the search, her nine tailed fox friend seems to have big plans for her.

You can check out volume two of this series for yourself below!

My thoughts on this volume

While I am still enjoying this series, I do feel like volume two lost a bit of the magic that volume one had. We’re seeing some relationship progress between Aoi and her ogre captor, much to my dissatisfaction, and we finally started getting some much needed Kakuriyo lore. If I had things my way, this series would be purely fantasy, sans romance. I do not feel even a hint of a spark between Aoi and the ogre, so I’m hoping their relationship can grow to be something like mentor and mentee. I’d even take boss and employee. Just, anything besides husband and wife, please.

Now that I’ve gotten my complaints about the romance out of the way, I did enjoy learning more about the ogre’s role within Kakuriyo! It turns out he’s actually not the worst ogre out there, and there’s a good reason why his employees are so loyal towards him. I did enjoy learning more about his relationships with various side characters… but I didn’t really enjoy watching those side characters try to abuse Aoi just a few pages later. You can’t try and make me emphasize with a character just to make that character do something terrible just a few pages later!

Speaking of characters doing terrible things—I have begun seeing Aoi as too forgiving. She’s a very kind character who had no choice but to accept her new circumstances… but that doesn’t mean she has to forgive and nurse back to health an ayakashi that just tried to kill her a few pages ago? While I understand this act is done to show just how good a person Aoi is, as a reader I found it to be incredibly lacklustre. There wasn’t even a real conversation about what happened! We had the perpetrator say something like “I love the ogre, and hate you.”, to which Aoi says something like “I see. You really love him.” and that’s it?? If it were me, I would have refused to treat her until I at least got a promise she wouldn’t try to kill me again, but that’s just me.

Things I particularly enjoyed (spoilers)

❤️ The little kappa turtles making a reappearance!! I loved the little bonus chapter featuring them.

🧡 Aoi taking care of the old tengu boss because he reminded her of her grandpa. It was sad…but at least it ended up helping save her life!

💛 The racoon ayakashi!! She only the second one to show Aoi any kindness, and she’s just as cute as the nine tailed fox!

💚 The ogre saving the geisha from being sold off to a gross man—he has the capacity to be kind to everyone but Aoi, I guess?

💛 The geisha in general—I can see her becoming the third ayakashi in Aoi’s little group of friends.